Today in History

China and Japan sign a $20 billion trade pact, which is the most important move since the 1972 resumption of diplomatic ties.

The World Council of Churches being held in Geneva, urges immediate peace in Vietnam.

Four persons are held in a plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell and the Washington Monument.

Fidel Castro takes the oath as Cuban premier in Havana.

A U.S. flag flies over an outpost in Wilkes Land, Antarctica.

The FBI arrests 10 members of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina.

Stalin contends the U.N. is becoming the weapon of aggressive war.

American paratroopers land on Corregidor, in a campaign to liberate the Philippines.

Richard Ford, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist (The Sportswriter, Independence Day).

Tojo outlines Japan’s war aims to the Diet, referring to “new order of coexistence” in East Asia.

The British destroyer HMS Cossack rescues British seamen from a German prison ship, the Altmark, in a Norwegian fjord.

Dupont patents a new thread, nylon, which will replace silk in a number of products and reduce costs.

Thousands of Socialists battle Communists at a rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Bessie Smith makes her first recording “Down Hearted Blues.”

George Kennan, U.S. diplomat and historian.